Leila

given name · Portuguese · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Leila is a given name, most frequently recorded in China, where it is the 5th most common surname. It appears chiefly in Portuguese and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Hebrew and Arabic, 'night'; used for dark-haired or dark-complexioned girls.

rarermore common
  • CNChina1 in 24◐
  • SGSingapore1 in 179
  • AUAustralia1 in 207

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈724K ●

across 10 countries

#6 ●

of 21M surnames

9 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
596 ●

31M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 480 ◐

United States

Spellings & scripts●

LiLatin · English●102M records
ЛилияCyrillic · Russian●2.4M records
ליליHebrew · Hebrew●38K records
ᲚეილაGeorgian · Georgian●35K records
ไลลาThai · Thai●3.9K records
리리Hangul · Korean●303 records
ԼիլիArmenian · Armenian●108 records
ΛιληGreek · Greek●85 records
ለኢላEthiopic · Amharic●27 records

6 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Lee in US United States, KR South Korea, GB United Kingdom and 7 more, Li in CN China, FR France, ES Spain, Lili in HU Hungary, PE Peru, MX Mexico and Лилия in RU Russia, KZ Kazakhstan.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

Hebrew and Arabic, 'night'; used for dark-haired or dark-complexioned girls.

Sources 1

  • Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios

Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Leila is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China#5101,219,573153K rec.—listedLi233
RU Russia—2,580,756960K rec.—#48Лилия168
TR Türkiye—1,273,5971.3M rec.—185KLeyla103
UA Ukraine—1,060,6701.1M rec.—listedЛілія64
GB United Kingdom#468749,4161.2M rec.—2.2KLee310
US United States#286693,02322M rec.1 in 480696KLee596
AU Australia#40519,846747K rec.—741Lee332
CA Canada#74253,434496K rec.—102Lee275
HU Hungary—209,5362.4K rec.—21KLili126
MY Malaysia#115209,005372K rec.—2.9KLee201
DE Germany#272125,300170K rec.—10Lee200
GE Georgia—117,12435K rec.—16KLeila39

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • Portuguese1.5M62%
  • English293K12%
  • French202K8%
  • Spanish190K8%
  • Finnish62K3%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Portuguese1,513,76262%
English292,98912%
French201,9208%
Spanish189,8228%
Finnish62,0923%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Leila is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English given name353K records spelled Leila46 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Brazil, United Kingdom, Australia

    Languages: English, German, Danish

    Also written Leïla, Leilae, Lei'La', Léilà, Léïla

  • French given name211K records spelled Leila8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Belgium, United States, Morocco

    Also written Leïla, Léïla, Léila, Leîla, Lëila

  • Finnish given name66K records spelled Leila4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Finland, United States, Sweden, Estonia

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Leilä, Leïla

  • a separate given name11K records spelled Leila8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Iran, Morocco, United Kingdom

    Also written Leïla, Leĭla, Léïla, Lei͏̈la, Leíla

  • Indonesian given name4.2K records spelled Leila8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, United States, Philippines, Malaysia

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Leïla, Léilâ, Leilá, Lëîlã, Léïlâ

  • Hungarian given name3.1K records spelled Leila4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Hungary, Slovenia, United States, Finland

    Also written Lèilà, Léila, Leïla

57 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Leila is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Irish, Saint’s name of obscure meaning; very old name still in use.

    as a nameIrish first names

  • Of Arabic origin, now fairly common in the English-speaking world, having been used as a name for an oriental beauty by both Byron, in The Giaour (1813) and Don Juan (1819-24), and by Lord Lytton for the heroine of his novel Leila (1838). In Arabic it means ‘night’, apparently alluding to a dark complexion. Variants: Laila, Layla, Lila.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • In French, Origine arabe; signifie « douceur de la nuit ».

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • In French, Arabic Layla/Laylā, 'night'.

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • In Italian, variant (feminine in form) of Lello.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Over time●

05001K1.5K2K1900195020001.5K · 2010

Show as table
Leila in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1880–2025
Yearrecords
188080
188177
188283
188390
1884103
1885123
1886115
1887112
1888170
1889126
1890154
1891178
1892178
1893173
1894152
1895147
1896149
1897157
1898161
1899139
1900178
1901145
1902140
1903138
1904148
1905154
1906160
1907171
1908150
1909145
1910163
1911143
1912195
1913234
1914259
1915363
1916368
1917352
1918369
1919384
1920405
1921345
1922363
1923335
1924365
1925344
1926313
1927306
1928279
1929285
1930317
1931287
1932305
1933294
1934241
1935240
1936183
1937239
1938190
1939177
1940183
1941211
1942202
1943204
1944197
1945176
1946166
1947177
1948156
1949180
1950169
1951154
1952161
1953176
1954195
1955177
1956182
1957177
1958157
1959192
1960172
1961191
1962190
1963171
1964161
1965136
1966175
1967141
1968105
1969136
1970130
1971163
1972140
1973145
1974155
1975157
1976160
1977192
1978186
1979196
1980184
1981224
1982212
1983213
1984205
1985220
1986212
1987215
1988221
1989200
1990183
1991199
1992197
1993199
1994186
1995217
1996180
1997213
1998297
1999306
2000427
2001566
2002638
2003893
2004893
20051,043
20061,161
20071,394
20081,499
20091,390
20101,509
20111,377
20121,365
20131,472
20141,331
20151,309
20161,395
20171,410
20181,358
20191,388
20201,409
20211,385
20221,246
20231,272
20241,197
20251,193

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 146 years between 1880–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

190019502000Leila Hyams, b. 1905Leila Abashidze, b. 1929Leila Forouhar, b. 1959Leila Meskhi, b. 1968Leila Pahlavi, b. 1970Leila Hatami, b. 1972Laïla Marrakchi, b. 1975Leila Josefowicz, b. 1977Leila Lopes, b. 1986Leila George, b. 1992

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence●

Attested in 116 sources across 68 countries.

Official registers attesting Leila
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—102K#468
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)202294K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—94K#335
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202038K#1,093
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)202423K#463
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—16K#283
FI FinlandDVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register)—10K—
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—4K#1,060
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—3.9K#709
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—3.5K#582
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20202.7K—
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—1.8K#1,158

Reference works 4

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 1,412 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Leila?
We estimate roughly 724 thousand people bear Leila (counting its spellings and scripts) across 10 countries in our records.
In which country does Leila have the most bearers?
Leila is most frequently recorded in China, where it is most often spelled li.
How common is Leila compared with other names?
In China, Leila is the 5th most common surname of 134,008 surnames recorded there.
Is Leila a male or female name?
Leila is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What does the name Leila mean?
Recorded meaning: Hebrew and Arabic, 'night'; used for dark-haired or dark-complexioned girls.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/leila

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Leila” — the 5th most common surname in China. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Leila parses inside a full name →